Tag Archives: embassies

Israel, Bahrain cement new ties with pledges of embassies and visas

By Maayan Lubell

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Bahrain and Israel said on Wednesday they would open embassies, establish online visa systems and launch weekly flights between the countries soon, in a broadened cooperation promoted by Washington as an economic boon and means of isolating Iran.

On the first official visit by Bahraini officials to Israel, the Gulf kingdom’s foreign minister, Abdullatif Al-Zayani, said a Sept. 15 deal normalizing relations spelled “a warm peace that will deliver clear benefits to our peoples”.

The United Arab Emirates, which has also normalized ties with Israel, sent a delegation last month that did not leave Ben Gurion Airport in what was described as a coronavirus precaution.

The Bahraini envoys went on to Jerusalem, which Israel, with U.S. backing, considers its capital. Palestinians want East Jerusalem for a hoped-for state.

Al-Zayani’s trip coincided with a visit to Israel by U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who hailed the regional rapprochement brokered by the Trump administration as it presses sanctions against Iran.

The normalization deals “tell malign actors like the Islamic Republic of Iran that their influence in the region is waning and that they are ever more isolated and shall forever be until they change their direction,” Pompeo said alongside his Bahraini counterpart and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Al-Zayani announced that, as of Dec. 1, Bahrainis and Israelis will be able to apply online for entry visas. He also submitted a request to open a Bahraini embassy in Israel and said an Israeli embassy had been approved for Manama.

Israeli Foreign Minister Gabi Askenazi, who is due to visit Manama next month, said he hoped opening ceremonies for the embassies would be held by the end of 2020.

The Bahraini delegation travelled on Gulf Air flight GF972 – a reference to Israel’s telephone country code – in what was the airline’s first flight to Tel Aviv. Al-Zayani predicted 14 such flights weekly starting next year, as well as flights to the smaller Israeli destinations of Haifa and Eilat.

Sudan followed Bahrain and UAE in announcing last month it would move towards ties with Israel. The engagement has outraged Palestinians, who want their statehood goal achieved first.

Further such developments appear unlikely before U.S. President-elect Joe Biden takes office. Israel was due to send a first delegation to Sudan on Sunday, officials told Reuters, but the trip was postponed over what they described as logistical issues.

Speaking on Israel’s Army Radio, Intelligence Minister Eli Cohen said a commitment towards a tough policy on Iran by Biden would determine whether other countries would opt for normalization deals with Israel.

(Additional reporting by Lisa Barrington, Dan Williams and Jeffrey Heller; Editing by Robert Birsel, Gareth Jones and Timothy Heritage)

State Department still investigating diplomats’ illnesses in Cuba, China

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. officials are still investigating health problems at the U.S. embassy in Cuba, and do not know who or what was behind the mysterious illnesses, which began in 2016 and have affected 26 Americans.

“We don’t know who is responsible and we don’t know what is responsible for this,” Kenneth Merten, Acting Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Western Hemisphere Affairs, told a House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee hearing.

The administration of President Donald Trump, which has partly rolled back a detente with Cuba, responded to the health problems by sharply reducing staff in Havana and in October expelled 15 Cuban diplomats.

Cuban officials, who are conducting their own investigation, have denied any involvement or knowledge of what was behind it.

Symptoms have included hearing loss, tinnitus, vertigo, headaches and fatigue, a pattern consistent with “mild traumatic brain injury,” State Department officials have said.

In April, Canada said it would remove families of diplomats posted at its embassy in Cuba as information from medical specialists raised concerns about a new type of brain injury.

The State Department said last month it brought a group of diplomats home from Guangzhou, China, over concern they were suffering from a mysterious malady resembling brain injury.

Merten said he was not aware of any other embassies having been affected.

“We have taken this … very seriously, both in the Cuba context and the China context which is, frankly, still very much evolving,” he said.

(Reporting by Daphne Psaledakis and Patricia Zengerle; editing by Susan Thomas)

Fewer Russian spies in U.S. but getting harder to track

FILE PHOTO: A sign at the gated entrance of the Consulate General of the Russian Federation in Seattle, Washington, U.S., March 26, 2018. REUTERS/Lindsey Wasson/File Photo

By Warren Strobel and John Walcott

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. decision to expel 60 alleged spies is unlikely to cripple Russian spying in the United States because others have wormed and hacked their way into American companies, schools, and even the government, current and former U.S. officials said.

Moscow’s spy services still use the cover of embassies and consulates, as Washington does. But they also recruit Russian emigres, establish front companies, dispatch short-term travelers to the United States, recruit Americans, and penetrate computer networks, the officials said.

“Russia used to have one way of doing things. Now, Putin is – let a thousand flowers bloom,” a former senior U.S. official said in a recent interview, describing Moscow’s move to a more multifaceted approach under President Vladimir Putin, a former Soviet spy himself.

The FBI follows the movements and monitors the communications of suspected foreign spies, but the increased Russian presence and the advent of commercially available encrypted communications are an added challenge to the FBI’s counter-espionage force, said the officials, some of whom spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive topic.

As one U.S. official put it when asked if Russian spying is a harder target: “It’s more complex now. The complexity comes in the techniques that can be used.”

While the CIA tracks foreign spies overseas and the National Security Agency monitors international communications, the FBI is responsible for spy-catching inside the United States.

The White House on Monday said it would expel 60 Russian diplomats, 12 of them at the U.N. mission, and close the Russian consulate in Seattle as part of a multi-nation response to the Kremlin’s alleged nerve agent attack on a former Russian spy in Britain.

Briefing reporters, a senior U.S. official said there were “well over” 100 Russian spies posing as diplomats in the United States before the expulsion order.

A veteran U.S. official charged with keeping tabs on Russian espionage said the administration downplayed the number of suspected Russian spies working under diplomatic cover to avoid giving the Russians a clearer picture of how many people are under surveillance.

The actual number varies over time, but “it averages more like 150 or so,” the official said.

“We’ve got a very, very, very good counter-intelligence apparatus,” said Robert Litt, a former general counsel for the U.S. Director of National Intelligence. “There are a lot of people in the FBI whose job it is to track these people – and they’re very good at it.”

TAKES TEN TO TANGO

Still, it can take 10 or more U.S. trained FBI and local law enforcement officers to keep tabs on one trained spy for a 24-hour period – covering back entrances to buildings and multiple elevators, and being alert for changes in clothes, cars and even hairpieces, the same official said.

One Russian tactic is sending a large number of people, including just one or two intelligence officers, streaming out of a diplomatic mission at once, making it harder for the FBI to decide whom to follow, said a former U.S. intelligence officer, also speaking on the condition of anonymity.

Microsoft Corp. was one target of the Russian espionage operation in Seattle, U.S. officials familiar with the expulsions said. One goal was identifying targets for recruitment in the company’s coding operations because the company’s products are used in so many applications, they said.

Microsoft declined comment.

In 2010, Alexey Karetnikov, a 23-year-old Russian spy who had worked at testing computer code in Microsoft’s Richmond, Wash., headquarters, was deported by an immigration judge.

Several of the officials traced the Kremlin’s more aggressive spying approach to Putin’s 2012 return to the presidency, and Moscow’s 2014 seizure of Crimea and intervention in eastern Ukraine.

“We observed a commensurate uptick in Russian intelligence and espionage activity in the U.S. and across Europe, although few analysts connected the dots,” said Heather Conley, a former State Department official now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank.

Michael Rochford, a former FBI chief for espionage, said the mass expulsion of suspected spies posing as diplomats will affect Russia’s security services and dent morale at their Moscow headquarters.

After past expulsions, he said, Russian spies have handed their operations over to officers who remain behind, or to “illegals” – long-term agents with no demonstrable connections to the Russian government.

The risk, he said, is that when Moscow replaces the expelled personnel, it will not be clear who the new spies are.

“Sometimes it’s better to know who they are and follow them,” he said.

(Additional reporting by Jonathan Landay; Editing by Mary Milliken and James Dalgleish)